Planned Parenthood tries to make abortion legal in pro-life El Salvador (they're trying in Guatemala and other Latin American countries too); Should Obama jail opponents og Global Warming hoax? Senator Sheldon Whitehouse might go along; Pro-abortion members of Congress dodge questions about human beings being human; and is the Communist Chinese government going to liberate the family, or control it?
PRI Review:
News From The Frontlines in El Salvador, China, the Middle East, and Here at Home
October 2, 2015
As everyone knows by now, Planned Parenthood is preying on American women and dismembering their babies. But that does not exhaust the list of the abortion giant’s crimes. It turns out that it is actively and aggressively involved in growing its grisly business by exporting abortion to every corner of the Earth.
PRI’s Steven Mosher and Jonathan Abbamonte find that in El Salvador, for example, Planned Parenthood has been funding non-governmental organizations (NGOs) that have been actively involved in advocating and pressuring the government to legalize abortion. A recent article from the Salvadoran newspaper, La Prensa Gráfica, reveals the details of this covert operation to undermine existing pro-life laws.
El Salvador is one of only seven Latin American countries in which abortion is illegal in all circumstances. According to surveys conducted by the Pew Research Center, only 2 percent of Salvadorans find abortion morally acceptable. This makes El Salvador one of the most pro-life countries in Latin America.
Among the groups supported by Planned Parenthood is The Collective of Women for Local Progress (La Colectiva de Mujeres para el Desarrollo Local). Better known as the Colectiva Feminista, it has been actively involved in the promotion of the legalization and decriminalization of abortion in El Salvador. According to La Prensa Gráfica, the Colectiva Feminista in concert with another Salvadoran pro-abortion group, Citizens for the Depenalization of Therapeutic, Ethical, and Eugenic Abortion were approved for a grant of $150,000 by the Safe Abortion Action Fund (SAAF).
Now there we have an Orwellian moment. In his novel 1984, Big Brother’s torture chambers were located in the Ministry of Love. The lying propagandists of the regime worked in the Ministry of Truth.
And for Planned Parenthood, the murder of Children is called “safe.”
So what is Planned Parenthood paying for here?
Well, the grant will sponsor a project that pro-abortion activists hope will lead to the legalization of abortion in El Salvador.
SAAF is a fund operated and administered by the International Planned Parenthood Federation (IPPF) which has the purpose of promoting unrestricted abortion around the world by supporting like-minded NGOs. According to IPPF’s 2014 financial statements, SAAF expended over $7.4 million USD in the FY 2013-2014.
El Salvador’s Colectiva Feminista also received an unrelated grant of $43,894 from IPPF itself for its abortion-promoting operations in El Salvador according to records.
IPPF has also provided significant funding for the Salvadoran Demographic Association which has been instrumental in promoting and distributing contraception across the country, particularly in rural areas. In the Fiscal Year 2013-2014, the Salvadoran Demographic Association received $476,253 in grants from IPPF. Among their many campaigns is a program that is “centered on the promotion, education, and delivery of injectable and oral contraceptives and condoms.”
NGOs most commonly use Depo Provera as their injectable contraceptive of choice. Remember, Depo Provera is known to cause at least temporary loss of bone mineral density. The FDA advises that Depo Provera not be used for patients with a history of breast cancer or deep vein thrombosis. If contraceptive campaigns in other countries are any indication, administration of Depo Provera and other contraceptives are often dispensed without a prior medical examination and without regard to contra-indications.
The article in La Prensa Gráfica has caused a media firestorm in El Salvador, with many media outlets condemning the Colectiva Feminista and the Agrupacion Ciudadana for being little more than front groups for El Norte’s abortion industry.
El Norte? That’s us, folks.
Well, In an effort to extricate themselves from the controversy, the two groups released a statement, which read in part: “The project has as an objective: ‘to contribute to the reduction…of the criminalization…related to the lack of legal access to abortion, through legislative changes and the adoption of protocols in cases of abortion or obstetric complications that cause the death of the fetus.”
Note that the statement does not deny that the outside funds will be used to effect the legalization of abortion. In fact, read it again. These groups, and their American and Western funders, will not be satisfied until all unborn children in the world, whether in El Salvador or elsewhere, are at risk of abortion and dismemberment.
Next up: Is China's One Child Policy Coming to an End? In just a moment, we’ll take a look.
This is PRI review from www.pop.org. We’ll be right back.
Station Break
Do you know what NFP means?
NFP stands for Natural Family Planning is the natural way to celebrate life, love, and marriage while avoiding the dangers of powerful artificial hormones.
NFP brings husband and wife together, sharing the mysteries of life as they work together with God’s natural plan for raising a family.
And you don’t have to be Catholic to practice NFP. In fact, many women have switched from the pill to NFP after they’ve discovered the damage that the pill does to their bodies and to their well-being.
NFP recognizes that women conceive only when their bodies are ready. And the science behind NFP reveals to the couple when those “fertile days” are by giving certain signals that can easily be detected.
In fact, when you cooperate with these natural signals, you’ll find that NFP is more accurate than the pill – totally without any damage to your health, your marriage, or to the environment.
So don’t let the Pill come between you and your spouse. Celebrate life and its mysteries by learning about NFP. You can easily check out PRI’s NFP video – just search for PRI and NFP on YouTube.
You’ll be glad you did.
Segment Two
Do you oppose global warming? If you do, you might have a federal racketeering lawsuit thrown at you by the White House to shut you up. If you persist, the government might even put you in prison for voicing your views.
Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (D-RI) wants Obama to go after people who oppose the trillion-dollar Global Warming industry.
And it might happen.
After all, Obama has forced individuals, colleges and universities, private and public companies, and even the Little Sisters of the Poor to spend tens of millions of dollars defending themselves against his demand that they succumb to the contraceptive mentality and pay for artificial birth control and abortion as part of their mandatory health coverage under ObamaCare.
This time around, Senator Whitehouse is urging Obama to go after anybody who disagrees with the corrupt campaign for global government control – a campaign disguised as “global warming.”
That’s right, the senator wants Obama to use the (Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act) – which was by Joe Biden, by the way. The law was designed to go after drug gangs and extortionists, not people who are exercising their First Amendment rights.
There’s a lesson here.
Leftists might claim to believe in diversity, but not when it comes to their opinions: there they play the role of tinhorn dictators, pushing people around and siccing the Thought Police after them.
Let’s face it, Global Warming is on the ropes. So its defenders – who profit handsomely from this worldwide con – go after their critics. And they want Big Brother to silence them.
Remember, these are the allies of Pope Francis and his notorious ideological lieutenant, Archbishop Sanchez Sarondo, who brands any opponents to his left-wing tirades as selfish, polluting capitalists or members of the Tea Party.
An Argentinean and close friend of the pope, Bishop Marcelo Sánchez Sorondo, Chancellor of the Pontifical Academy of Sciences, has polluted the conversation to the point where many people normally friendly to Holy Mother Church have begun to wonder, should they write us off as a bunch of political crackpots?
Before we do, let’s look at another part of the world, where we find a very brave Bishop indeed.
In Iraq, Patriarch Louis Sako, the head of the Chaldean Catholic Church in Baghdad, is joining other Christian Prelates and asking Christians in the Middle East not to abandon their homelands despite threats from radical Islamic groups. He also slammed the countries who give preferential treatment to Christian refugees.
Patriarch Sako is not popular among some Americans, because he has consistently placed the blame for the chaos in the Middle East on the U.S. invasion of Iraq twelve years ago.
At that time – in fact, in March 2003 – Pope Saint John Paul II warned President Bush that the invasion was ill-advised. The pope urged the president to reconsider, because the invasion would cause chaos in the Middle East.
Unfortunately, Saint John Paul has been proven right – the region is in chaos, and Christians are paying the price more than anyone else.
Patriarch Sako of Iraq is blunt: as he puts it, invasion made it possible for the Mohammedans to do what they had never before achieved in 1400 years. Because today there is real danger that Christianity will be completely extinguished in the Middle East.
And yet, Patriarch Sako wants Christians to stay in their homes in Iraq and Syria, but in those war-torn lands ravaged by ISIS terrorists that is often impossible.
Meanwhile, right now Europe is being inundated by a virtual invasion of people traveling – some say fleeing – from countries all over the Middle East.
In response, some European leaders are refusing to take in the thousands of young Moslem men at their borders, allowing only Christians. But Patriarch Sako says that, and I quote, “The European countries must welcome those who really need it, without regard to religion.”
In early September, Melkite Greek Catholic Patriarch Gregorios III of Antioch urged young Christians in these war zones not to leave.
“Despite all your suffering, stay! Be patient! Don’t emigrate! Stay for the Church, your homeland, for Syria and its future! Stay! Do stay,” he said .
ISIS invaded Mosul, Iraq’s second largest city, in June 2014. It housed one of the largest Christian communities in the world where they lived peacefully with Muslims for over 2,000 years. But after the invasion, there are no Christians in the city. A month later, Andrew White, the vicar of the only Anglican church in Iraq, told BBC Radio that Christianity is coming to an end in the country.
“Things are so desperate, our people are disappearing,” he said. “We have had people massacred, their heads chopped off. The Christians are in grave danger. There are literally Christians living in the desert and on the street. They have nowhere to go.”
“Are we seeing the end of Christianity?” he continued. “We are committed come what may, we will keep going to the end, but it looks as though the end could be very near.”
When the rebel group al-Nusra Front overran the Christian village of Maaloula, 40 miles north of Damascus, the terrorists executed three Christians and kidnapped a dozen nuns before being driven out by the Syrian army.
During the battle for that village one Christian addressed the BBC cameraman with these chilling words: 'Tell the Europeans and the Americans that we sent you St Paul 2,000 years ago to take you from the darkness, and you sent us terrorists to kill us'.
Well, as Lenin says, what is to be done? Two years ago, Patriarch Sako opposed Obama’s plans to invade Syria and depose President Bashar Assad – and, as usual, Obama intended to bypass the Constitution to do so.
But it didn’t happen. Pope Francis urged a worldwide day of prayer and fasting, and the effort fizzled within days.
Islamic terrorists oppose Syria’s president Assad not only because he is a Shiite (and the terrorists are Sunnis), but also because Christians flourish under Assad’s regime, while the terrorists want to behead them all.
Patriarch Sako condemned the notion that Obama could impose democracy by force and invasion. It didn’t work for Bush in Iraq, and it wouldn’t work for Obama in Syria.
Patriarch Sako understands democracy better than many American presidents do. "Everyone is talking about democracy and freedom, but to reach those goals one must pass through historical processes and one cannot think of imposing them in a mechanical way or with force,” he told the Vatican News Service.
In the meantime, the chaos in the Middle East has created a historic and massive surge of people, mostly young male adults, from the Middle East and Northern Africa seeking to enter Europe by various routes, originating in the Mediterranean and Turkey.
Their intentions are not all that clear.
Some undoubtedly want to enjoy the peace that currently prevails in the European Union, as well as its generous welfare programs for immigrants.
After all, Europe is a demographic desert, and it desperately needs young workers to replace the children that Europeans have either aborted, or refused to have.
But some of these so-called refugees have other motives.
For instance, Top Iman Sheikh Muhammad Ayed of Jerusalem has called on Muslims to use the migrant crisis to breed with European citizens and “conquer their countries,” Infowars reports.
In a video of his speech at the Al-Aqsa Mosque in Jerusalem, Ayed alleges that European countries are rolling out the red carpet for migrants not because they were compassionate, but because Europe was in dire need of a new source of labor.
“Europe has become old and decrepit and needs human reinforcement, Ayed says. “They are not motivated by compassion for the Levant, its people and its refugees.” And then he puts the frosting on the cake: “Soon, we will trample them underfoot, Allah willing.”
“Throughout Europe, all the hearts are enthused with hatred toward Muslims. They wish that we were dead, but they have lost their fertility, so they look for fertility in our midst,” he added.
“We will give them fertility! We will breed children with them, because we shall conquer their countries!”
Now for some news from the home front.
The Center for Medical Progress has now released ten released ten investigative videos Revealing Planned Parenthoods “Parts for Profit” operations at their abortion clinics nationwide.
Planned Parenthood’s President Cecile Richards appeared before the House Oversight Committee and testified that, in her opinion, “Abortion is healthcare.”
Richards, a former staffer for Catholic pro-abortion congresswoman Nancy Pelosi, now earns $600,000 a year as CEO of the abortion conglomerate.
In classic Clintonian fashion, Richards played dumb, repeatedly saying she was ignorant of key particulars of her organization’s activities. When she was asked if babies who survive abortions should be given medical care, Richards actually replied, that she had never heard of such a circumstance happening!
After the hearings, several pro-abortion members of Congress were asked their views by an from cnsnews.com.
“Is an unborn baby with a human heart and a human liver a human being,” the enterprising reporter asked?
Representative Takai of Hawaii said: “Oh, I don’t want to talk about that.”
Rep. Niki Tsongas of Massachusetts refused to answer at all.
And pro-abortion Democrat House Leader Pelosi of California said, “I’m a devout practicing Catholic … and I do not intend to respond to your questions.”
This stonewall extends to the executive branch as well.
Clearly, under the Obama Administration no federal investigation or prosecution of the countless crimes committed throughout the federal branch are going to be pursued. Pope Francis condemns corruption, and here we see it exposed for all to see.
It is this massive “get out of jail free” card that energizes the brazen malfeasance, crimes, denials and outright lies on which this perverted ship of state is floating, buoyed up by an abortion-crazed media and intellectual and cultural elites.
When we come back, we’ll look at Communist China: Is its One Child Policy Coming to an End? Or will it simply be replaced by a coerced breeding program?
This is PRI Review from www.pop.org. We’ll be right back.
Station Break
Founded in 1989, the Population Research Institute is a non-profit research and educational organization dedicated to objectively presenting the truth about population-related issues, and to reversing the trends brought about by the myth of overpopulation. Our growing, global network of pro-life groups spans over 30 countries.
Our mission statement describes our goals.
Debunk the myth of overpopulation, which cheapens human life and paves the way for abusive population control programs
Expose the relentless promotion of abortion, abortifacient contraception, and chemical and surgical sterilization in misleadingly labeled “population stabilization,” “family planning,” and “reproductive health” programs.
Defund these programs by exposing the coercion, deception, and racism inherent in them.
Emphasize that people are the most valuable resource on the planet, the one resource we cannot do without.
Promote pro-natal and pro-family attitudes, laws, and policies worldwide.
Encourage programs to help the poor become agents of their own development.
You’ll find in-depth and original reporting on website on every facet of the fight for life and family, both at home and abroad.
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Segment Three
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Will the Chinese Communist Party loosen the stranglehold it has had on reproduction since the late seventies? There has been much speculation that the 13th Five-Year Plan, to be released next month, will significantly relax the well-known One Child Policy.
If the regime does back away from its draconian birth limits, it won’t be because senior Party officials have suddenly developed a conscience. Rather, it will be because they have finally realized that a shrinking workforce and a rapidly aging population are crippling future economic growth.
For at least the past two years, China’s workforce has been shrinking. Last year, the potential workforce fell by 3.71 million, a significant number even by China’s standards. At the same time, the over-sixty population is exploding. According to U.N. projections, it is expected to more than double by 2050. China is growing old before it grows rich, and the strains on China’s nascent pension programs will be enormous.
As Bloomberg reports, Mu Guangzong of the Institute of Population Research at Peking University has emphasized that “[China] must move from restricting childbirth to encouraging it as soon as possible.”
The parallels between China’s current demographic and economic malaise and Japan’s demographic and economic decline in the 1990s is striking. The Japanese economy has never really recovered from its “demographic recession.” China may not recover either.
The One Child Policy has caused fertility rates to plummet over the past three and half decades. The U.N. Population Division estimates fertility rates today sit at an anemic 1.55 children per woman, far below the replacement level of 2.1. One scholar has suggested that due to a deeply skewed sex ratio in China, the replacement rate is closer to 2.3. Many Chinese men will never marry and never have children.
Sex-selective abortion has reached epidemic proportions in many parts of the country. The strong preference for sons in Chinese culture, especially in rural areas, has resulted in the deaths of millions of unborn baby girls. While thenatural sex ratio at birth is 106, data from China’s 2005 intercensus survey show that country’s average to be a lopsided 119 boys for every 100 girls. Others have perished from female infanticide, malnutrition and neglect.
The overall loss of human life in China is staggering. China’s own Ministry of Health estimated in 2013 that 336 million babies had been aborted as a result of the onerous population control program. With an estimated 13 million abortions taking place in China every year—almost 1,500 lives per hour—the number is likely significantly higher today.
The Policy has also resulted in the sterilization of over 222 million women and men . Many sterilizations have been used as punishment for couples failing to meet stringent birth quotas. Some women are not even aware that they have been sterilized until months later.
Fertility cycles are charted and tracked by family planning officials. Women in many locales are forced to appear for mandatory sonograms or pelvic examinations every few months. If a woman is discovered to be “illegally” pregnant, she is coerced into having an abortion.
Forced abortions are commonplace. Women found to be pregnant without a birth permit are required to abort under the pain of crushing fines which run from three to five times their family’s annual income. They also face imprisonment of family members, confiscation of personal property, and demolition of their homes. Recently, a media firestorm in China was ignited when a woman eight months pregnant was told her husband would lose his job if she did not abort, another common practice.
Women are also forced to abort if they are pregnant before the age of 23 or are found to be pregnant out of wedlock. Even women who are permitted to have a second child are forced to abort if the child is conceived too soon after the first.
Reports of women being dragged to abortion clinics are not uncommon. Family planning officials have been known to force their way into private homes and cart women away to abortion facilities.
As Ma Jian reports in The New York Times, women have been known to be tied down to hospital beds as they wait for their baby to die from the lethal injection administered directly through the abdomen:
For two days she writhed on the table, her hands and feet still bound with rope, waiting for her body to eject the murdered baby. In the final stage of labor, a male doctor yanked the dead fetus out by the foot, then dropped it into a garbage can. She had no money for a cab. She had to hobble home, blood dripping down her legs and staining her white sandals red.
Babies have been given the lethal injection up to the point of birth, even as they are descending the birth canal. Some are born crying, only to die moments later, turning cold and motionless on the operating table.
Chinese President Xi Jinping first sought to loosen the policy in 2013. It was announced that couples where both the husband and the wife were themselves only children would be allowed to have a second child following the birth of their first. The response was underwhelming as few couples applied for a second birth “permit."
This suggests that a second, greater dispensation for couples to have second children may be in store. But don’t expect it to stop there. A government bent on controlling the fertility of its people will do whatever necessary to produce the number of children it thinks necessary.
After all, the One Child Policy is only one phase of the larger Planned Birth campaign. This is Beijing’s ongoing campaign to control the reproduction of the Chinese people under a state plan in the same way that it controls the number of tanks, or the number of coal-fired power plants, that it builds each year.
This means that, if the Chinese people refuse to conceive and bear the number of children that the state demands, childbearing will become mandatory. Women will be forcibly inseminated, regular pelvic examinations will be instituted to monitor their pregnancies, and abortions will be forbidden.
Unless and until the Communist regime abandons its Planned Birth policy, and allows couples to freely choose the number and spacing of their children, abuses will continue.
And since when has a one-party dictatorship ever voluntarily relinquished even a portion of the power that it wields over its people?
Our listeners will recall that Pope Paul VI predicted the horrors of China’s barbarism. Es, in 1968, in his encyclical entitled Humanae Vitae, the pope warned that, if artificial contraception became widespread, women could be reduced to being a mere instrument for the satisfaction of men’s own desires – that is, a sexual object.
Moreover, Pope Paul also warned us about politicians:
“careful consideration should be given to the danger of this power passing into the hands of those public authorities who care little for the precepts of the moral law,” he wrote.
“Who will blame a government which in its attempt to resolve the problems affecting an entire country resorts to the same measures as are regarded as lawful by married people in the solution of a particular family difficulty? Who will prevent public authorities from favoring those contraceptive methods which they consider more effective? Should they regard this as necessary, they may even impose their use on everyone?
In Communist China, forced abortion is clearly considered just one more contraceptive method, and Pope Paul was right – the communist commissars of China have indeed imposed its will on everyone.
This has been the PRI Review from Pop.org. I’m Christopher Manion, thanks for listening.
